Is SBF Going to Prison?
sbfgoestoprison.com
sbfgoestoprison.com
It really only seems that way because people have amnesia about the timelines involved in accountability for similar events; Enron collapsed in December 2001 (well, that’s when the bankruptcy was filed, Ken Lay resigned as CEO in January 2002.) It wasn’t until February that there were hearings in the Senate. The first indictment related to it was in March ’02 – for Arthur Andersen, Enron’s accounting firm, who were convicted in June ’02. Enron’s CFO was indicted in October ’02 and convicted in a plea bargain in January ’04, and Ken Lay wasn’t arrested until July ’04 and was convicted in May ’06.
SBF being out free three whole weeks after the SBF collapse is not strong evidence that he will never see a day in jail and other accountability. So far, that have been public, there were separate probes of FTX and/or FTX.US by at least CFTC, SEC, and DOJ in progress before the collapse, and there are more institutions in more countries targeting FTX and its principals now.
The NYT began publishing legitimately scathing articles about Enron and effectively accusing outright fraud in January 2002 [1].
Contrast to the kid-gloves puff-piece the NYT published about SBF recently.
If we take the NYT as a bellwether for what the "elite" and well-connected want known, it's quite clear that the treatment is very, very different between the two collapse stories.
My personal feeling is that SBF is not permanently safe. Like Epstein, occasionally you have to sacrifice one of your own to sate the appetite of the masses and to quell the tendency of conspiracy theories to be demonstrated correct. Depending on how uncontrollable narratives evolve on this story, it's possible they'll need to throw him under the bus.
For the moment, however, it's clear they're treating this as Not-Enron. He's safe for now. We'll see.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/us/enron-s-many-strands-e...
We should not, nor should we even take the relation between NYT and elite opinion as relatively consistent over time.
There is a difference between knowing and proving. The gears of the legal system can move slowly, but deliberately. With this much money on the line, you don’t want to quickly jump to conclusions. It’s better to figure would what happened first and then determine the best path forward.
But I think your main question is actually the point of this page/token/article. What if nothing happens? What if it just gets swept away? The point of the token being - let’s see what happens in a year. Keep pressure and visibility up on this. At the end of 2023, let’s take stock and see what has happened to unravel the what was really done with the money from FTX... and what the consequences are.
Having politicians as friends only helps when one is not radioactive. Pulling strings can sweep minor problems under the rug but this is a giant problem, and I suspect SBF will find that all his donations won't buy him anything given his current predicament.
The mainstream media does not deserve the benefit of a doubt anymore. From this point forward, I am going to assume that anything published by the NYT, the post, the WSJ, any of them, is either purposefully misleading or just a bold-faced lie.
Does anyone have any good reasons why this is illogical? I really do not see a reason why we should think any of these people are trustworthy.
I've also seen the argument that this is just "run of the mill journalism", in that it's totally normal for an outlet to run puff pieces if they get paid to do so. But doesn't that completely undermine the integrity and trustworthiness of the outlet writing the pieces? If any rich guy can just buy positive press without any scrutiny, why should we give them our trust?
Journalism is supposed to be about digging up dirt on the rich and powerful so that us peons can get mad when they do bad stuff and make sure our government to punish them. This scandal is so massive because it involves journalists and government actors working together to make sure that didn't happen with SBF. How is anyone supposed to trust any of these people ever again?
I just don't buy it. I just can't believe that all these hundreds of millions of dollars moved between all these entities without anyone understanding what was really going on.
The vast majority of journalism articles have never involved any of that. They are there for informational purposes. You get a few investigative pieces with a much larger helping of lighter fare.
It takes time to run an investigation. Since FTX is not a regulated institution, it may in fact not be a fiduciary for its 'customers'. It's not black and white from a legal perspective and will take time to unravel. The fact he's still walking around means the US isn't a banana republic that just locks people up by popular demand.
The public won’t hear that name on The View or Trevor Noah. Therefore there was no fraud.
As to the idea that connections will always get you out of trouble, again I don't think that's universally true. Elizabeth Holmes is extremely well connected as was Bernie Madoff but that didn't stop either of them being prosecuted and convicted.
My guess here is that once the dust settles on exactly what's happened with FTX (which is still unclear in a lot of ways) SBF will be charged.
Ken Lay was Dec 2001 -> July 2004
Madoff was very quick from the collapse to arrest (December 2008 for both), but that’s largely because he confessed to his sons and told them he planned to surrender to authorities, who talked to the FBI, who visited Madoff who then confessed that it was “all one big lie” to them.
The reason it was fast with Madoff wasn’t the confession, per se, it was that it came with the telegraphed (and actual) intent to surrender to the authorities.
Though I suspect SBF’s inability to control his public statements is an indicator that it is likely to be quicker to line up things against him than it was against Lay, its not going to be as easy as with someone who was burned out and done fighting like Madoff.
Definitely some people are more equal than others. And I realize he is in the Bahamas.
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re: premise below
There is plenty of non-fabricated probable cause for SBF, pretty much all of below is a false premise.
A search warrant needs to specify a particular place to search and particular things to search for. So, even if there was an LEO that was going to fabricate evidence to support such a warrant…what would they fabricate evidence to point toward that would actually be useful?
Also, while it may not have mattered to the LEO fabricating evidence against you–assuming your story is accurate–it may be that the particular folks involved in the SBF investigations are less willing to commit crimes of their own to advance it, if not for ethical reasons, potentially because the attention to the case and the resources likely to be deployed by the defense make it rather more likely than in your case that either (1) such a crime would result in criminal consequences for the government agent committing it, or (2) manufacturing evidence would compromise any prosecution of SBF.
The event was updated today morning to add two more speakers.
You are right and I suspect SBF is going to get sentenced very leniently, probably with bail in a year and home arrest.
Do you have this stat? conservative-aligned judges do give harsher sentences to white-collar crimes? Because in my country, this is pretty much the opposite.
They even bail them out of prison for "medical reasons" and then we can see them on the dancefloor at christmas. Hopefully we'll get US-like gun laws (and US will uban sniper rifles and sniper AP rounds, as their mass killing power is low).
https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/10/07/implication...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-21/us-prosec...
Investigations take time.
I don't personally put any credence into this very old and ugly conspiracy, but given the recent surge of attention to it by other unhinged actors, if this kid doesn't get thrown under the bus and burn, the meme is only going to grow much stronger legs to run with.
This is a dangerous moment, and the elites need to be aware that people are watching to see what they do when it's one of their favorite sons who crosses the line.
If someone is a rich bad person, they are disproportionately likely to be Jewish. If they are a rich good person they are also disproportionately likely to be Jewish.... but some only see the bad.
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2...
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-u-s-foreign-aid-t...
Anyway, the lesson I got after seeing SBF's philanthropic forays, which were all a ruse, was to never trust a techbro no matter how inspirational outwardly they may be. Ravening wolves they are the lot of them, in sheeps' clothings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried#Early_life_a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Fried
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/6/21046631/mind-the-gap-si...
>“Among the three executives, $57 million was given to Democratic candidates, while $22 million went to Republican candidates,” opensecrets.org details. “Bankman-Fried was the second biggest Democratic-leaning megadonor and Salame was 10th largest Republican donor this election cycle,” the report adds.
https://news.bitcoin.com/ftx-execs-gave-70-million-to-both-d...
I will admit this is all pretty upsetting to me though. I'm a very left-leaning person, and to see the party that is supposed to represent my values doing this stuff and then everyone making claims along the lines of "well everyone does it" is very disappointing.
I'll make sure to add a "I am not a republican" disclaimer in the future.
Quite a lot of companies give to both sides. Tech money has been prominent: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/03/american-billionaires-spent-...
There's SBF next to Larry Ellison and Peter Thiel.
I know this is cliche and I honestly hate saying it, but can you imagine if SBF some guy with two deeply connected republican parents, one of whom founded an explicitly secretive superpac for republicans? Don't you think the reaction would be a bit different?
Who are implicated?
So if it's parody, I get where the author is coming from. (The site won't load for me, so I can't tell myself!)
(In the wake of FTX I'm making a conscious effort to point this crap out as explicitly as possible ahead of time.)
There's no mention of a timeout or anything on the main page so it all seems rather ambiguous
There is also a countdown timer on the site (currently at 403 days).
Given the scale of the FTX debacle, it seems to me that this would be a rather quick turnaround to get a potential verdict (and reporting to jail).
Would the release happen if he’s arrested? Convicted? Physically in prison? US? Bahamas? Too many details.
The fact that anyone gave this dude any money, considering he literally looks homeless half the time, is enough reason to conclude everyone involved got what they deserved. If you get grifted by a homeless looking person, you deserve it, and if you are a good enough grifter to take billions of dollars while looking homeless, you are entitled to all the millions you stole. People who throw all their money at a risky get-rich-quick scheme aren't innocent bystanders (unless they're literally mentally incompetent, but I don't think that explains the sheer size and scope of crypto today; it's mostly people propping up a giant lie with the hopes that they'll profit before it topples on them).
Appearances mean nothing in terms of execution. Please don't cargo-cult false signals or promote dumb, discriminatory negative narratives that have nothing to do with a venture.
If you hire a 50 year old male babysitter wearing a t-shirt that says "I Love Little Girls", you could ignore it on the basis that "appearances mean nothing in terms of execution", but it would be extremely bad parenting.
Ivy pedigree, connections, and media hype but no experience, governance, or ethics required. Get rich quick with life on the easiest setting possible.
What if users' possession on FTX are actually valued much less now?
No. The long arm of the US banking system extends globally. I have a friend that's a fed that chases people internationally on stuff like this. They won't forcibly extradite you w/out the host countries cooperation though. So if he pays off the right people he can stay there in perpetuity.
But... his assets can be frozen, even at the host countries bank via threat of being cutoff from SWIFT.
It slows things down, but doesn't stop them.
(If "going to prison" means convicted and sentenced, I very much doubt that could happen before the end of 2023.)
Is there? I thought the point of FTX was that it was offshore so that it could ignore american laws. I guess with FTX.us also collapsing he can be hit by those customers.
It makes the case more complicated, but I think the scale and audacity of this will motivate prosecutors to take it on.
That FTX was targeting Americans seems fairly straightforward to prove... E.g., The Super Bowl commercials that aired in the US.
For those who haven't been following so closely to know the principals by their TLAs [0]
- he goes to prison extraordinarily fast (before EOY 2023) so what? coins are burned then what? burning half the supply doesnt guarantee a liquid cashout, they're essentially becoming late-night TV collector coins.
- he doesn't go to prison, half the coins are airdropped back to holders. fucking great, two hands of shit instead of one, oh the possibilities.
Haha, Hal Finney (the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, and probably even Satoshi Nakamoto himself) wrote about this idea 11 years ago:
"Any successful replacement of the Bitcoin block chain will forever undermine the credibility of any successor. How is an investor to know that it won't happen again?" — Hal Finney
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=10666.msg152988#msg1...
I don't happen to see why financial innovation has to require a complete disregard of all that has gone before it and a presumption that astonishing naivety and hubris are entry requirements. But then, what do I know.
0. Can the business model be made sustainable long-term?
1. Does it create value for almost all participants?
2. Is it secured by governance, policies, tech, and auditing (internal and external) from malicious actor(s)?
If the answer to any or all is "no", then it's probably a variant pyramid scheme.
The "innovation" here was taking money from your customers, failing to account for it, and then losing it.
This is how the state does a new thing in. He lets it run wild. And if it can self-contain and restrain, have a concept of governence and self-regulation, you will get away with a lot. But crypto did not.
Crypto did not pass the test, the only thing it was good at, was destabilizing the aristocracy of totalitarian governments, by offering them monetary escape routes.
So the tech will life on in the belly of the financial institutions, the rest, well nothing of value was lost.
SBF and his Smegol counterpart will be around as long as they can avoid the people who didn't have the funds to lose.